NCKU 2026 Material Industry Forum: How Advanced Packaging, Testing, and Materials Innovation Are Redefining Taiwan’s Semiconductor Competitiveness - semivision

The NCKU forum is not an academic exercise—it is a strategic signal that Taiwan, China is racing to lock in upstream material IP before its packaging advantage gets commoditized. Technical cascade: in the CoWoS-L and SoIC era, ABF substrate formulations, low-k dielectrics, and underfill chemistry now dictate yield ceilings at 2nm and below. Elevating materials science to the center of an industry forum marks a deliberate pivot from fab capacity to recipe moats—far harder to replicate than another wafer plant. Compliance and risk: photoresist remains a Shin-Etsu/JSR duopoly; precursors depend on Merck and Linde. Consumables cannot be stockpiled the way equipment can—a formulation cutoff halts production overnight, making this a more lethal structural vulnerability than any equipment ban. Competitive dynamics: Intel's Foveros Direct, Samsung's X-Cube 2.0, and the glass-substrate push from LG Innotek and Absolics are actively eroding Taiwan, China's packaging monopoly. Without a closed-loop materials stack, that edge dilutes within three to five years. Twelve-to-twenty-four-month outlook: HBM4 TSV copper-fill chemistry and chiplet hybrid-bonding dielectrics will be the next battleground. If glass substrates reach volume production, Ajinomoto's ABF dominance faces its first existential threat since 2005.